If you’re anything like me, you probably started blogging as a vehicle to get your words out to the world.

Very quickly though, you realize there is a lot more work to make that happen then just writing a great blog post and hitting publish online. Actually building an audience and community has taken participating in the community I want to have through Twitter Chats, attending events, writing challenges, guest blog posts and so much more. It has meant building a business around my blog that includes in-person events, online initiatives and much more. But at the crux of the important writing that we do will always be authenticity.

So many writers want to get more eyes on their work. They want to have all the followers and all the likes, but often there is simply something missing. And most often I will say that there are two reasons that your work isn’t getting the attention you want. Either you are not promoting it properly or enough OR it simply has not become your best work yet.

Listen, you don’t have to be discouraged because both of these things are totally FIXABLE. Starting with promoting your work. No one is going to know that you posted a new blog post unless you tell them. It’s that simple. If you don’t already have an audience then you start with the people that you know. You post it on your Facebook page. Who cares if people didn’t friend you to read your blog. Someone will care what you have to say and that my friend is the beginning of creating your tribe. With people that you know!

As you build that base, then you start working on other vehicles to connect with the people that will care about what it is you have to say. You have to overcome the fear of feeling like a narcissist. Guess what, we all are. Lol. We like to pretend that we are not self-absorbed people, but we really are. I bet you most of your day revolves around you, how you feel, whether you want to go to work or not, whether your children are annoying you, etc. So let’s not play. You write because you have something important to say, not because it’s something to do, so your duty is to make sure that it gets to the people that need to hear it.

Then there is the 2nd part, making your writing your best work. Brace yourself here, but maybe what you’re creating is simply mediocre and that’s why a lot of people aren’t interested yet. Before you close the tab on me here. Bear with me. HAHA! I have been in that space. There came a certain time in my journey while blogging that I realized, some of what I was writing just really wasn’t connecting. And it was based on my need to really dig deeper and to be more honest and more authentic. I promise you that great writing will attract the audience.

So how do we begin to create more authenticity in what we’re writing? We have to learn how to confront ourselves through our writing with no one watching first. We all know that I am an advocate for journaling. I found that the more I confronted my TRUE feelings without the fear of judgment because they were just in my journal pages, the more I was able to manifest that in my blog writing. I found that a lot more things that I was writing made me afraid to hit publish and that’s when I saw the numbers and the engagement increase.

Then there is also this balance of transparency and oversharing. I am not telling you to pour your life story into your blogs because I do believe that some things should be left for private. But I am saying that people can see the fluff. If your blog isn’t really giving the reader the tools that they need or the emotion that they can truly relate to, that’s why your audience is stagnant. What I am saying is that we have to learn how to connect our writing to the soul of another person in a way that makes them feel like they need to read what we have to say. Whether it’s giving them steps to start their business, encouragement, or help with their mental wellness. You will need to deliver that message in a way that helps them trust that you know what you’re talking about. And the way the people do that is through the sharing of personal stories.

As you write and continue to write, you will indeed learn how to keep that balance. Empathy is one of the greatest qualities of a writer and that’s how you balance your personal struggle with that of others without giving all the juicy details of your life.

Authenticity then is the ability to be able to explore both the light and the darkness in your writing. It is our ability to write what we know we have been made to say as opposed to what is popular. So that means if you want to write about social revolution that you write about that instead of writing about branding because it’s the thing that can make you money. Authenticity is continuing to confront yourself, how you feel, take assessment, and document your process in a way that can be understood by others.

You want to build the tribe, to build the audience, and the community, but I am telling you that doing that starts with building up yourself enough to share what’s real. To hone in on what makes your writing important and to learn how to effectively translate what’s happening in your mind into words. That takes practice, that takes instruction, and that takes writing. That’s what I worked to create through the first half of The Writer, The Brand.

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This year, I released my first e-course, The Writer, The Brand to help writers like you refine their writing voice and expand their reach organically. This process starts with finding your voice and learning how to create authenticity in your writing. No buy now tricks, no gimmicks, simply instruction that I wish I had when first starting a blog some years ago. This course is for the writers that blog. Those that want to use their blog as a vehicle for their writing to create opportunities.

Below you can sign up for a FREE 5-day email course that is just a glimpse into what you get through the full course.